Hidden in Plain Sight
by vampirepenguin
Summary: Shikamaru figures it out. [set during Chuunin finals, spoilers for aforementioned]


**AN: **_Hidden in Plain Sight_, unofficially known as "that Shikamaru-figures-it-out fic". Because not everyone's as oblivious as Uchiha Sasuke. Yes, I am a hopeless Shikamaru fangirl. It happens.

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Somewhere in between glowering at the crowd assembled to watch them fight (like some macabre gladiatorial contest) and bolting for the shadows to avoid a crazy Sand kunoichi's attacks, Shikamaru figures it out.

It really hits him while he's in the air, which is rather inconvenient, because then he forgets to land correctly and gets the wind knocked out of him.

So he stares up at the contestants' balcony, seeing the bright yellow hair vivid against the concrete backdrop. Temari's talking in the background, but he's not listening. He's figured it out, and the world feels like it's listed about ninety degrees sideways, leaving him feeling stupid and disoriented.

There's no time to absorb his sudden realization, though. His own fight is up and there's nothing to do but fight.

It's troubling, but he has no time to work through it, piece by piece, finding the logic and reason and all the little details that have suddenly fallen into place in his mind.

So he blocks it all out and puts his mind to fighting. He loses, but that's not really a surprise. He's not much good at the solo thing, in any case, and he wasn't exactly giving his all.

Then the Uchiha shows up (_show-off_, some corner of Shikamaru's mind grumbles), and everyone's caught up in that fight and then suddenly he's fighting off jounin-level genjutsu and _what the hell is going on_ but he knows what's going on, and—

He slumps to the floor. Better to play dead than to play hero and actually wind up dead.

Then there's a dog biting his ankle and maaan, he hates dogs. He's not a big fan of important missions either, particularly, but he ends up saddled with both, as well as two-thirds of team seven.

Why couldn't they have just woken up Chouji and Ino?

But they're running, and now he can think again.

He sorta likes running, though he'd rather die than admit it. It's mindless physical activity that allows time for thought and doesn't involve major bodily injury. What's not to like?

Now he has time to think, time to sort through everything.

Like everyone else, he'd watched the fight between Naruto and Hyuuga Neji. Like everyone else, he'd been expecting Naruto to get pounded.

Of course, Naruto _had _gotten severely pounded, but won the fight after all. And Shikamaru knows why.

He'd watched the red chakra leak out, the nine banners of power wrap around Naruto, lending him renewed strength and speed. And his mind had put two and two together…and come up with nine.

Everything had fallen together in that moment, the details sliding into place with a smoothness that made it impossible to doubt. However far-fetched it sounded.

Since childhood, he'd been told that the Kyuubi had been killed by the Fourth. All those of his generation had been told that, and they'd accepted it unquestioningly as truth. The adults don't much like to talk about it, so he'd never really asked for more on the subject.

He had noticed how cold they were to that one child, though, and had wondered why. But he'd never bothered to ask about that either. It just…was.

Naruto, he'd always thought, was a war-orphan. His parents might have been shinobi, killed on a mission, or they might have been civilians, dead in an accident. He had considered approaching the outcast, out of the simple contrariness that had won him Chouji as a friend, but something had warned him off.

Now he understands.

Naruto carries the Kyuubi. Assume that was true (and it is, it had to be), and everything else made sense.

That didn't mean he isn't still Naruto, though. Naruto is loud and obnoxious and he makes Shikamaru want to strangle him for being so thick half the time, but he isn't a demon. Aren't fox-demons supposed to be clever? In any case, Naruto is Naruto. The fact that Shikamaru now understands where the sudden power came from makes little or no difference. It's just one more factor to consider when he has to plan around the noisy genin.

He does feel a bit stupid for not having figured it out before, though. Maybe that's why he decides to play the hero for once.

It's a very out of character action for him, offering to sacrifice himself for others. He's never thought of himself as having any particular desire to become a martyr or anything troublesome like that. But in the end, it's logic that compels him to act.

Because, in the end, he's the only one who's suited for it. After all, the _kagemane _was originally developed as a delaying tactic.

Shikamaru smiles faintly and looks up at the clouds. He can sense them coming closer, following the false trail he's laid. So he raises his hands, folds them into a familiar seal, and reaches out…

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**Endnotes:** Aw, c'mon. You can't tell me the kid has an IQ over 200 and DIDN'T figure it out at some point? Oh, and this fic has a kinda sorta follow-up that will be posted whenever I get off my lazy bum and finish it and clean it up.  



End file.
